Info on Obama's academic past starting to trickle out

Tribe recently retrieved his daily calendar from that year and pointed to the entry for the last day in March. Just above reminders for "Haircut?" and "Write US Atty," it says, "11 am: Barack Obama (1L)," indicating that this was a first-year law student.

"And then it has a phone number, which I guess is his dorm room," Tribe pointed out, "and there's an exclamation point next to it."

That was to remind Tribe how impressed he was by this skinny kid in jeans, a sweatshirt and an afro.

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Professor Charles Ogletree plays a similar role in Obama's life. In 1989, Ogletree taught a non-credit Saturday course to give first-year students a basic set of skills in law school.

Ogletree remembers the student who always arrived on time, sat in the front row, and was professorial almost to a fault. After answering the question, Obama would say, "But Al, who talked earlier, had a very good point when he said X. And Sarah, I think she really captured it when she said Y. And if you think about Latoya, her analysis was ..." at which point Ogletree would interject, "Barack, I'm teaching this class, not you!"

That might sound like the arrogance Obama is sometimes accused of, but to Ogletree it sounded like this student was trying to bring everyone into the conversation.

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The review editors were a partisan, contentious group. Classmate Brad Berenson remembers the guy from Hawaii who floated above the fray. "One of the enduring images I have of him is of a guy in jeans and a leather jacket, Jimmy Dean style, standing out in front of Gannett House smoking a cigarette."

Berenson was one of the conservatives, and in a long, contentious election, his group ultimately supported Obama's candidacy.

"They did that in part because they had a sense that he was more open-minded and would listen to the conservatives, and would value and accept their contributions in a way that some of the other candidates would not," says Berenson, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and is now a member of Romney's justice advisory committee.

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Mack, Obama's classmate, remembers walking back from Harvard Square getting a bite to eat with his friend. "Everyone knew he could clerk for the Supreme Court, get a high-paying law firm job, at least make a lot of money for a couple of years before he went off and did something else," Mack says. "And he said that he had decided that he wasn't going to clerk, and he wanted to go back to Chicago and just get started in the work that he wanted to do with his life."

A lot of this stuff, or stuff similar from the same sources, was already in "The Bridge."

We had a big long pissing match on here because CarltonBanks kept insisting that no one from Harvard had ever been quoted or interviewed about Obama's time there. He was hinting that Obama did not attend Harvard or Columbia.

Actually, I think he was merely concerned for the President, who he thought should clear this matter up. For the President's own sake.

Since I live in Hawaii, it's always funny when someone tells me, "No one in high school remembers him." I can always say, "I can talk to his classmates." Doesn't change anything, but it's fun to point out anyway.

Plus, I think he's been pretty open about the fact that he wasn't the greatest high school student. He's a bit of a late bloomer, and not afraid to admit it. He had to transfer into an Ivy League school, etc., etc.

I don't think he even used cocaine. I think he huffed paint, and then there was a point in time where it served him well to puff up the story that he used cocaine, or at least he didn't correct others' impressions that he may have used cocaine. And then when he started campaigning it just became easier to stick with the cocaine story than to backtrack and correct the record that he did indeed huff paint.

I don't think he even used cocaine. I think he huffed paint, and then there was a point in time where it served him well to puff up the story that he used cocaine, or at least he didn't correct others' impressions that he may have used cocaine. And then when he started campaigning it just became easier to stick with the cocaine story than to backtrack and correct the record that he did indeed huff paint.